PURPOSE:

This petition has been created by the residents of Long Beach, California, to express the immediate need of addressing the serious homelessness situation endangering our beautiful City.  Along with the current homelessness situation comes an increase in witnessed and recorded crime such as vandalism, assault, theft, indecent exposure, open drug use, blatant mental illness, and lewd acts that are being committed daily. We, tax paying and voting citizens are tired of being exposed to this in every minute of the day on our streets.  We are frustrated with the City of Long Beach collecting funds for the homeless with no transparency of where that money is going, and at the same time, seeing an increase of people on the street! We are tired of attending Council and Community meetings hoping we will be heard and something will be done!  

MISSION:

First and foremost, we demand the City of Long Beach immediately make homelessness a priority. We need LONG-TERM solutions, i.e., opening up existing vacant building the City already owns to provide housing. Immediately open the already purchased 75-unit Luxury Inn hotel that has been sitting vacant for almost 15 months. We also need some type of medical facilities to assist and house those with mental illness and substance abuse issues, including continued rehabilitation. 

Secondly, while we understand the Long Beach Police Department is trying to fill its vacancies, other recruitment incentives need to be offered to fill those vacancies faster.  In the meantime, maybe we could get our bicycle officers back into patrol vehicles and expand our Medical Evaluation Team (MET).  By expanding the MET Team, our Police Department can focus more on crime instead of trying to assist the homeless - leave that for the MET and Quality of Life Teams. We need to start enforcing laws, improve the response time to 911-related calls, and train 911 dispatchers to be a little more compassionate and understanding to their callers.

Lastly, our community needs the City of Long Beach to create a “Public Oversight Committee.”  This committee would provide the public with community updates, assistance with issues, transparency and accountability. For instance, the City receives millions of dollars to address this homeless crisis and, unless we are told about it, we do not know where this money is being spent.  All we are seeing is an increase of people living on the street with absolutely no progress.  

City leaders should be passionate and love the city they represent.  They need to be proud of their city and the people that live in it and we are not seeing any of this.  Governing city officials have proved that they do not care.  It seems that only residents, specifically those living closer to downtown care but that HAS to change, and it starts NOW!

First Amendment

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Thank you for your support!